


que será, será

by sapphicish



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, Post-Canon, i...guess?, look i love my two mothers and i wanted them to live that is IT that is why we're all here today
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 19:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17873090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: “I didn't think you were coming for me,” Cha-Cha says.The Handler smiles at her.





	que será, será

**Author's Note:**

> my whole and in fact ONLY reasoning behind writing this is: the handler and cha-cha are both very neat and hot and therefore deserve to live, and it was very rushed as was my first and so far only watch-through of tua so if there's any mistakes just...Know me...Understand me...

“I didn't think you were coming for me,” Cha-Cha says.

The Handler smiles at her. They're in a grassy field somewhere. The sun is bright and shining. There's not a single sign of the apocalyptic fire that had swallowed her whole, or the payphone, or the rumbling—the noise, the heat. There's nothing.

She's alive. Still wounded, bleeding and aching and thinking _what is the fucking point,_ but alive.

It should make her happy, or relieved, or something, but all she is is something like tired, something like bone-deep exhausted and – and dreading something. That's new, but not surprising when you take into consideration whose company she's been unexpectedly thrust into within a flash of light.

“Of course I came for you,” the Handler says lightly, cheerily. “I got your call. It just took a while. Well, not for you. For me. I _was_ dead at some point between then and now, after all. Hazel's doing, unfortunately. He also took my briefcase. It was all very embarrassing for me personally, between us two girls, but my superiors were kind enough to deliver a replacement between everything else.”

“Uh,” Cha-Cha says, ignoring all of that for the time being because the last thing she needs is an even worse headache, “right. Where are we?” 

She means to say _when_ are we, but _where_ works just as well. It's all the same in the end, and maybe it doesn't really matter anyway. Maybe it never has. But it's not up to her to deal with all of that. It's only ever been up to her to get the job done.

The Handler hums thoughtfully, turns to look around at their surroundings – nothing but tall trees and, far off in the distance, a lonely and winding road. Cha-Cha reaches up in the silence to yank a sliver of glass from her face, one that's been bothering her more than the rest. Her bloody fingers slip a few times before she finally gets a decent enough hold on it, and all she allows for the pain when she yanks it out is a soft, quiet curse under her breath.

The inhale makes her ache in a familiar way – that bitch must have broken a rib.

Judging by the way the Handler is looking at her - like she's just crawled up out of the dirt in the form of a grotesque, twisting, wriggling worm - she looks just as bad as she feels.

“Twenty eighteen. California. North, more specifically. Early spring, I believe. I had planned to take us back to headquarters, but I was in a bit of a rush what with the 'end of the world' as you know it and it dropped us here instead. But it could have been much worse. When you rush time, very bad things can happen. You could have come back to me dead, in pieces, or not at all.”

“So I'm alive. And you're alive.”

“Yes,” the Handler says, scarred and smiling. “So it seems. And you look awful!”

Cha-Cha looks up at the sky. It's bright and blue, and the air is fresh and crisp, and she breathes in until her lungs burn. It doesn't take a lot to come to that point.

“I know," she says, and then "I failed the job,” even though it doesn't need saying. Nevermind that her memories are a little muddled, nevermind that she doesn't know exactly what happened, nevermind that she doesn't get the tiny details. She doesn't need them. She never has. Her job is just to work.

“I know you did.” The Handler smiles a little wider when Cha-Cha looks back to her.

“So _why_ am I alive?”

“I'll be honest with you, Cha-Cha. I've always had a certain _fondness_ for you, if I can be so blunt.”

Cha-Cha snorts. “No you haven't.”

The Handler fishes for a cigarette somewhere in her coat. “No I haven't. But I do like you a lot more than Hazel now, if that means anything to you.”

“It does,” Cha-Cha says politely, not quite sure if she really means it. “Thanks.”

“Excellent. The truth is that, really, I intended to leave you both for dead up until the whole situation...escalated. I know you two caught on, considering a certain _someone_ shot me in the head. But things are changing in a way that they aren't meant to. I've had two unpleasant surprises in a very short span of time and I don't like surprises. Not even nice surprises. The Hargreeveses are misbehaving. Five is misbehaving. As usual. There's a saying. _Без кота́ мыша́м раздо́лье._ Roughly: when the cat is away, the mice will play. They're playing at something much bigger than themselves, and it needs to be corrected before things get out of hand. Only they already have, so you understand the difficulty.”

“And you still trust me to do that? To _work?_ ” Maybe she sounds a little more incredulous than she'd intended, because the twitch at the corners of the Handler's mouth is a little bemused now.

“If you want out, Cha-Cha, you only have to say so.”

“No,” she says quickly. It's the truth, mired as it might be in unease. One wrong step and she could die. Worse, one wrong step and she'd be out of a job, and without this she has nothing. “No, that isn't what I meant.”

They linger there for a moment. Cha-Cha counts the aches, the pains; there's the rib, there's the glass, there's a few other broken bones. There's one gash in her shoulder that the cloth of her suit sticks uncomfortably to. She knows without looking that there'll be countless bruises for days.

Now that the adrenaline and panic is wearing off, she's coming to an awful realization, and she twitches her right arm back a little, testing—

Oh. _Fuck._ Yeah, that's definitely dislocated.

"What about you, then?"

The Handler has moved in close, uncomfortably so, enough that she's suddenly lifting a handkerchief to pat at the corner of Cha-Cha's bloodied mouth and she's just standing there letting it happen.

"What?" she manages, around the seconds where her boss frets over her like a mother hen.

"You're going to say yes, aren't you? Does that mean you trust that I won't...say, _dispose_ of you once everything is over?"

"Hell no," Cha-Cha says, abrupt and hard and laughing a little because...god, she's tired, and if she wants to laugh a little in an unhinged sort of way, she's going to fucking do that. "But there's no other choices for me. Is there?"

"No."

Cha-Cha shrugs. "There you have it. And...all of this, it's what I know. And I'm good at it. Mostly. And I can be good at it again. I want to have the chance, and I want to take it. And since you're giving me it, here I am. Taking it. I mean, what else would I be doing? Running off with a waitress like _Hazel?_ I don't think so."

The Handler laughs, long and trailing and happy. Kind of girlish. Which is kind of freaky. "That's very good to know. But between you and I, I think you'd pull off the whole rebellious stage a lot better than Hazel." She winks, brushing at her coat. "So? Yes? We have a deal?" 

"Yes," Cha-Cha says.

The Handler lifts her cigarette holder, lips pursing around the end. The smoke almost glitters and blurs in the air, or maybe Cha-Cha is finally moving onto the worst part about being injured for long periods of time. Shit. Maybe she has a concussion. “Good. I'm glad to hear it. You and your contract would be officially terminated otherwise.”

“I won't screw up again,” she says, thinking about the one who left her alive, thinking about the one that destroyed the world.

Mercy is always a mistake, but she'd be lying if she said she wasn't glad to be alive here and now, just to think about the looks on their faces when she shows up again. Maybe, when it's all said and done – if it's ever all said and done – she'll track Hazel down too.

“Oh, I'll see to it you don't. Now, there's a diner a few miles off down the road and I'm feeling a bit peckish, aren't you?”

“I could eat,” she says immediately, instinctively. It's true, but...

The Handler is already walking ahead of her, pausing and turning – coat whirling out around her as she does, fanned like an umbrella popping open – to look back at her. “What is it?”

Cha-Cha looks up at her. She doesn't like that, looking _up_ at people, had grown accustomed to it with Hazel but at some point he had become the exception to all things. They'd be nearly of an equal height if not for the Handler's impractical heels and Cha-Cha's comparatively flat boots.

“I'm going to pass out,” she says, just so the Handler will know. She thinks it's well-deserved, a little nap after all of _this,_ but she doesn't let herself say that part.

“Oh.” Said like she's a little surprised but not _that_ surprised. “Right. Well, fine. Go on, then. I'll take care of the preparations. And you.”

Cha-Cha gives herself a moment to take that in. _'And you.'_ Ordinarily she wouldn't trust that, but she's already here, already alive. The Handler doesn't like playing games for no good reason. She's going to be _taken care of._ And not in a violent way that ultimately ends in her death.

So.

She passes out.

It's about time.


End file.
